They will mourn you as the best President Kenya never had. They will say you were truly the people’s President. The skeptics and the cynical will rejoice that the deal maker, the master compromiser, the perennial election loser is gone. Still, there will be those who wag their unbridled tongues as they have always done, spewing hateful epithets that you were a sellout, quick to go for a handshake — or was it a “hand cheque”?
You won’t miss those who saw you through the primitive lens of tribal prejudice — that by merely being born Luo, you were “uncircumcised and unfit to rule those who had gone to the river.” It matters not that the phallus has no role in political contests, ideological disposition, or socio-economic competence. As Raila Odinga often asked, why were they so concerned about what is below his belt when the women had not complained?
On these phallic matters, I can tell you three things before I reflect on this enigma of Kenya’s politics. First, KANU, the Independence party, set us on this path from the start with the symbol of Jogoo, tingisa! (wave one finger), declaring itself a virile party — with many offshoots, claiming capacity to rule for a hundred years.
Secondly, one day in 2007, in my column in The Standard, I wrote that as a Tugen man who underwent traditional Nandi circumcision, if the only reason we should not vote for Raila is because we think he was not cut — and we are not even sure — then I would be the first to vote for him.
Thirdly, how many circumcised Presidents have changed the world? Do we even know? And what shall we say about those circumcised as babies, or in hospital wards?
Since we don’t know if Raila was or was not, we are wasting time. Let us return to the real matter — that in every race he ran for the house on the hill, millions did not vote for him because of this brand of ethnic profiling and jingoism.
I must add, I really wished he had ruled Kenya, even for five minutes, as his father once said. We would not have to guess how he might have ruled or whether he would have run in 2027. Those answers are now gone with him.
Despite the counsel of journalism lecturers, allow me to write in the first person. I must make two confessions.
First, I was a fervent admirer of Raila, a believer in his political philosophy, and deeply envious of his bravery — even after spending nine of his eighty years behind the grey solitary walls of detention. He gave so much energy to our newsroom. What a dull day it was when we didn’t know where he was or what he was up to. Those who spoke closely with him would tell you that, fiery as he was before a sea of ululating humanity, he was almost shy and softly spoken. But when he laughed, the decibels rivaled the late William Ntimama.
My second confession — and it’s really an assumption — is about why he went to India for treatment, his last journey. I keep a picture of myself with him at his Kerarapon Road home in Karen. Tinga is holding his cellphone, showing me a message exchange with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. I had asked how his daughter Rosemary was doing after she collapsed and nearly died in a Naivasha hotel in 2017. Raila asked me to move closer and told me how, after nearly two years of blindness, his friend Modi had asked him to bring her to an Ayurvedic eye hospital and research centre in India. She came back with her sight restored.
It is telling that Raila died in an Indian Ayurvedic hospital, most likely undergoing treatment. In his own words of admiration for Modi and India’s medical system, Raila told me — joined at the time by KTN’s Swahili anchor Ali Maanzo — “Premier Modi is my great friend. He personally intervened, insisting we try India’s internationally respected natural and conventional medicine.”
Could Raila have suffered a condition that once again put him in Modi’s care? A family friend tells me he had a tumour and had been unwell since his Malindi visit a few weeks ago. For me, Modi represented not just a friend but also the global democratic vibrancy that Raila wished for Kenya.
Even if Kenya will one day get there, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr., like the Biblical Moses, Raila will not be with us to see it — if we get there at all.
You may recall that four years ago Raila was admitted to Nairobi Hospital and later underwent a head operation to ease pressure on his brain. The official story was that he had bumped his head on a car door. Privately, there was talk of a brain aneurysm — the same condition that, coupled with a tumour, afflicted his daughter.
He also had a tear gland problem that made his eyes occasionally drip tears — a result of hard labour in Kamiti’s quarry during detention. Combined with political frustrations, crushed ambitions, stolen victories, ethnic profiling, and the perception that he was a stubborn opportunist, his body had endured enough. After decades of torment under four Presidents, death finally caught up with him — in the world’s largest democracy.
Let us mourn him in our own ways, along the patterns and lenses through which we viewed and voted for him.
Now back to my own story with Raila Odinga — the man who, in the sage wisdom of the late Kijana Wamalwa, was both a thorn and a fascination in Kenya’s politics. Wamalwa once said Kenya’s problem was that of two tectonic plates grinding against each other — Railaphobics and Railamanics.
Years later, after both Wamalwa and Raila are gone, the fissures remain. Raila’s political journey saw him compete with and lose to President Moi, later work with him, then beat him symbolically with the “Kibaki Tosha” moment. He later faced Kibaki, Uhuru, and Ruto — and despite their clashes, he always found ways to reconcile. Ironically, he became their political lifeline outside the walls of State House.
I am persuaded by the confessions of several Ruto allies in the Rift Valley who say they saw power slipping during last year’s Gen Z protests and are eternally grateful to Raila for “saving us.” Their courage to say this, even under Ruto’s watch, shows he too might share that view — for as they say in politics, when you reach the end of the rope, tie a knot and pray.
I cannot end without recalling the sibling rivalry that defined Raila and Wamalwa during the Thika Ford Kenya elections fiasco. I was there interviewing Raila when gunshots rent the air. We hit the ground under the grilled dais — Raila’s and Gitobu Imanyara’s feet literally brushing my face.
Few know that in 1995, as Ford Kenya split into the Raila and Wamalwa camps, Nation Media Group decided to withdraw all political writers from the Luo and Luhya communities because of rising tensions and threats. That is how, as a young journalist fresh from the University of Nairobi, I ended up reporting Parliament and meeting Raila.
I never met his father, the doyen of opposition politics, who died while I was still in school. But Raila and I hit it off immediately. I had feared him at first because he had been demonised and profiled as a stone-throwing rebel, coup plotter, “communist,” saboteur, and stooge of foreign powers — some things unprintable.
Raila, like Wamalwa, said too many things to too many people.
Read more about the following: The untold Funny Side of Raila and the Political ties that shaped Kenya
- Why Raila told me Uhuru could never have him arrested.
- What he thought of Ruto and Gachagua.
- The Thika Ford Kenya fiasco and the Umpire stories.
- The day Mama Ida stormed Raila and Mudavadi’s drinking den.
- The many faces of Raila — including dyeing his hair.
- His breakfast table and fitness regime.
And many more to follow this week.
Let me end with one witty mischief from Tinga himself at Serena Hotel in 2008:
“To be a grandfather, you must be ready for your daughter to lose her virginity.”
Naughty — very unlike a man of his stature and age. But that was Raila. But Raila was unlike most of us Kenyans—unyielding, resolute, and unwavering in his convictions. He never allowed opportunities for vengeance or personal gain to define him.
You may disagree, but that’s how I saw him. Perhaps in his later days, as illness slowed his once-powerful political engine, he was coming to terms with a new reality—one marked by frailty and quiet reflection.
Kipkoech Tanui is a former Group Executive Editor and Head of News with the Standard Media Group PLC, and a former columnist and political commentator who began his journalism career at Nation Media Group in 1995. His writing reflects a newsroom life spent walking in the footsteps of Raila Odinga — the political enigma.
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